Francis Ledwidge, 1887-31 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge, poet, Irish nationalist and First World War combatant, was once described by Seamus Heaney as 'our dead enigma' on account of the seeming contradictions surrounding his life as an Irish nationalist and his death as a British solider.

Ledwidge was born in Slane, Co. Meath in 1887 and grew up in a farm labourer's cottage. Working locally and with only a primary school education, he showed a flair for poetry from a young age. His unlikely quest to become a writer received invaluable support and encouragement from local literary grandee, Lord Dunsany. 

Ledwidge was something of an identikit early 20th century Irish nationalist. He was an enthusiast for the revival of the Irish language, a member of the Gaelic Athletic Association (but also a cricketer), an activist in the nascent Labour movement and, through the influence of Dunsany, associated with the Irish literary revival. He was also an active member of the nationalist Irish Volunteers set up in 1913 as part of the struggle to achieve Home Rule. And Ledwidge became a member of the local authority in his area, a political domain in which the nationalist community had by that time become the dominant force.

When War broke out in August 1914, Ledwidge was among those who saw the proper role of the Irish Volunteers as defending Ireland from invasion rather than fighting on the Western Front. The majority of the Volunteers sided with Irish Party leader John Redmond when he urged them to enlist for war service while a minority refused to follow Redmond's advice. Those who fought in the Easter Rising were drawn mainly from the latter group. 

When his local branch of the Volunteers met to debate the issue, Ledwidge was among a handful of members who came out against Redmond. At a meeting of the local authority of which he was a member, Ledwidge stood alone in his defence of the anti-Redmond Irish Volunteers and was accused of being pro-German. Echoing a traditional nationalist view, he observed that 'England's uprise has always been Ireland's downfall.'

Remarkably just 5 days after that forthright expression of nationalist sentiment in opposition to Redmond's support for the war effort, Ledwidge enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and spent the remaining 3 years of his life in British uniform.

Ledwidge at war, 1914-17: Ledwidge seems to have been adept at soldiering and saw service at Gallipoli and in Serbia, from where he was invalided out to Egypt and eventually to Manchester where he was convalescing when news reached him of the Easter Rising. The executions of its leaders, and especially his friend, Thomas MacDonagh, left him devastated. He wrote about the Rising, making plain his identification with the rebels whose sacrifice would he hoped inspire future generations.

A noble failure is not vain

But hath a victory of its own

..

For mine are all the dead men's dreams.

His best-known poem is dedicated to the memory of MacDonagh:

He shall not hear the bittern cry

In the wild sky where he is lain,

Nor voices of the sweeter birds

Above the wailing of the rain.

Yet, while the Rising and its aftermath left him deeply disenchanted, he did not desert nor seek a discharge. He returned to the front in December 1916 and his correspondence from there reflects a stoicism and a determination to do what he continued to consider his duty.  As he wrote to the poet, Katharine Tynan, in January 1917: 'I am a unit in the Great War, doing and suffering, admiring great endeavour and condemning great dishonour. I may be dead before this reaches you, but I will have done my part.' He expresses perennial homesickness for his Co. Meath home, but there is also a surprising sense of excitement in the heat of battle.

Ledwidge was killed on 31 July during the 3rd Battle of Ypres when a German shell exploded beside him. He is buried at the Artillery Wood Cemetery, not far from the grave of the Welsh language poet, Hedd Wyn, who was killed that very same day, and whose home I visited recently in North Wales.

No more a 'dead enigma': Why did Ledwidge, the left-leaning Irish nationalist, end up dying in British uniform when he might just as easily have found himself fighting alongside his fellow poets, MacDonagh and Pearse, at the GPO during Easter Week 1916?  Perhaps James Stephens' description of him as 'a lump of a lad' gives some clue to this puzzle. He was clearly stung by accusations that he was pro-German and lacking in courage. As Ledwidge himself explained his actions: 'I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.'

One hundred years after his death, there is no longer any need to view Ledwidge as Seamus Heaney did in 1980 as an 'enigma' sounding a 'confusing drum'.  The centenary of the First World War has, I think, served to make us more comfortable now about the idea of an Irishman in a 'Tommy's uniform' 'ghosting the trenches', even as we recognise how uncomfortable this experience must have been for many of them, including Francis Ledwidge, in the aftermath of Easter week of 1916. 

I, for one, have immense sympathy for that tragic generation in Ireland who found themselves having to make life and death decisions that brought them, no doubt with complex, perhaps even confused, motivations, to the trenches of the Western Front and to the steps of Dublin's GPO.

 

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London